"Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George - The Cobweb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

nor Desiree's to go through the freezer memorizing all those little blue numbers. But Desiree, with her
all-consuming Nesting Instinct, somehow knew, as if ghostly voices had been calling to her all night, that
the spirit of the steer that had given up the ghost at Lukas Meats a year or so ago was haunting her to
make sure he had not given up his shanks, loins, gams, or whatever, just so they could be thrown away.
So now Clyde was browning this meat that had to be consumed before the stroke of midnight lest it turn
green and purulent. The steaks were waiting on the counter. Desiree was going to drop them off at the
neighbors' house on her way to work, shifting the moral burden onto their shoulders.

She came out of the shower with her hair wet, smelling of peaches and something sharper mixed in with
it. She was wearing one of Clyde's bathrobes because none of hers would go around her big belly
anymore, and even Clyde's had to be fixed with a safety pin in order to stay closed.

“You are an amazing creature," he said, turning to look at her, continuing to stir the meat with his other
hand. The Big Boss just crossed her arms over her breasts, on top of her belly, and smiled at him.
“Remember we have class tonight," she said.

Clyde wanted to make a disparaging comment about the class, in which a nurse from Methodist Hospital,
a woman with long gray hair parted in the middle, who lived with another woman and a lot of cats on a
farm near Wapsipinicon, told Clyde and Desiree and a bunch of other couples how to breathe. Clyde
had had a lot of confidence in Desiree's breathing skills to begin with, as she had been doing it for more
than thirty years now without any significant interruption. But even his first gently snide comment on the
breathing class, a couple of months ago, had led pretty quickly to tears on her part, reminding him the
hard way that as soon as he and Desiree had decided to get pregnant, they had entered into an area of
incredible tenderness where he was poorly equipped to do or say anything without causing lots of
emotional damage. So now he just followed the Big Boss around with his hands down at his sides, taking
small steps, not saying much, and it seemed to work pretty well.

“I'll be back for it," he said.

“You gonna start today?" Desiree said.

He hesitated for a second and then said, “Yup," which, now that he had said the word to his wife, meant
that he was committed for good. Clyde Banks was running for sheriff.

two
JAMES GABOR Millikan woke up every morning at six and did not move a muscle of his body
thereafter for fifteen minutes. He always found the transition from the unconsciousness of sleep to the
exquisitely controlled existence of his waking life to be frightening. He lay rigid, eyes open, as he ran
through the checklists of his life with the same thoroughness as a pilot preparing a 747 for a transpacific
flight.

And he would not think the comparison inapt. As the pilot did not want to crash and burn in midocean
for lack of preparation, so too did Millikan not want to make the slightest misstatement or give the world
any chance to make a misreading of him, and thereby of the United States of America. Only when he had
assured himself of the status of the multiple compartments of his life did he begin to emerge from the
protective cocoon of his eiderdown.

He stepped into his English slippers, which he had carefully arranged by the side of his bed the previous
evening, and put on his robe over his striped pajamas. His home was on Wisconsin Avenue in
Washington, D.C., right across from the National Cathedral, but this morning he happened to be in Paris,